All Appointments must be cancelled within 24 hours of your scheduled appointment. If you do not cancel within 24 hours, you will be charged full price.

Multiple Appointments

Scheduling multiple appointments within a week is against our policy. You will be charged full price if more than 1 appointment is booked within this time frame. If you book an appointment under your name for another person, you will be responsible for that charge. If you need to book more than 1 appointment within a weeks time, please call the salon to book the additional appointment.

Vouchers/Packages

Vouchers and Packages can only be used in the location they were purchased for or in. Please make sure you only book your appointment in the location that is listed on your voucher or in the location you purchased your package. If any appointment is made with a voucher for another salon location, you will be charged full price for your tan.

IMPORTANT:

When you are scheduling your tan online and have a voucher, make sure you choose the Voucher company name in the
section where you have to choose your tan
example: Gilt single tan, Gilt 2 pack
next, make sure you enter the voucher code.

All clients,must enter a valid credit card number in order to schedule an appointment. Even if you have a package or voucher.
Once you enter your voucher information, you will only be charged tax on that voucher.( $1.12 per session).
If you have a package, the system will recognize that and will not charge you.

In order to book an appointment with us, you must create an online account with full name, phone number, email address and credit card information,.
If you have difficulty doing this, we can help you over the phone.
Once you schedule your appointment, you will receive an email confirmation.

All Appointments must be cancelled within 24 hours of your scheduled appointment. If you do not cancel within 24 hours, you will be charged full price.

Multiple Appointments

Scheduling multiple appointments within a week is against our policy. You will be charged full price if more than 1 appointment is booked within this time frame. If you book an appointment under your name for another person, you will be responsible for that charge. If you need to book more than 1 appointment within a weeks time, please call the salon to book the additional appointment.

Vouchers/Packages

Vouchers and Packages can only be used in the location they were purchased for or in. Please make sure you only book your appointment in the location that is listed on your voucher or in the location you purchased your package. If any appointment is made with a voucher for another salon location, you will be charged full price for your tan.

IMPORTANT:

When you are scheduling your tan online and have a voucher, make sure you choose the Voucher company name in the
section where you have to choose your tan
example: Gilt single tan, Gilt 2 pack
next, make sure you enter the voucher code.

All clients,must enter a valid credit card number in order to schedule an appointment. Even if you have a package or voucher.
Once you enter your voucher information, you will only be charged tax on that voucher.( $1.12 per session).
If you have a package, the system will recognize that and will not charge you.

In order to book an appointment with us, you must create an online account with full name, phone number, email address and credit card information,.
If you have difficulty doing this, we can help you over the phone.
Once you schedule your appointment, you will receive an email confirmation.

Archive for May, 2012

Sometimes I kind of feel like I am living a sort of double life. Most of my time is taken up being a momma to my two little girls ages 6 and 11. In addition I have my businesses. I have the salon Brazil Bronze Glow Bar and I have my exercise program Burlesque Bikini Bootcamp, and then I have my labour of love – the Pink Chardonnays, an amateur burlesque performance group, with whom we have a lot of fun making choreography, putting on shows, and trying to perform as much as possible, for the sheer joy of it.

To me – all of my businesses revolve around one main theme. Just trying to make people feel comfortable in their own skin. For a long while when I was growing the salon and spray tanning for hours every day – the thing that really struck me was how many people hated or felt shameful about their bodies. How many people who were relatively young and attractive who were pissing away their lives feeling too fat, too ugly, too old and not good enough. It seems to be a cultural preoccupation with many people. I know when I was younger I certainly had more issues than I do now. I went through my own phase of waking up every day and feeling too this and too that. For me, after I had daughters, number one I got a whole new respect for the female body and how you could put on 35 pounds, spit out a kid, and how everything pretty much went back into place. Number two, I decided to rethink my issues to try and not hand them down to my daughters. It seems wrong to me that we live in a world when some people can consider some old, fat, bald guy “hot” and any woman who is over thirty and still single supposedly has more chance of being bombed by a terrorist than getting married. Did I really hear that??? Enough of this cultural double standard. I want to cheer and shout and appreciate many varieties of gorgeous womanhood. They are airbrushing anorexic teenagers to make them look thin and smooth enough. Think of Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe, think of hundreds of beautiful icons of times gone by. What is beautiful, what is sexy? Many, many different things. Bland is not sexy. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the eye of the creatrix. Surely there is a place for self expression.

I am a great one for action. I founded Burlesque Bikini Bootcamp specifically to design a workout that not only worked out the body – but also worked on the phsyche. I wanted to try and create a language and and an environment where people could start to learn new perspectives at how to look at their body. To create a place where self negation and self deprecation were not options, to work out, to sweat, to dance bathed in a language of self love and more than a dash of humor. Of course this is a work in progress and every day myself and my partner Teresa are tinkering with this formula. A safe, fun place for women to workout and rethink the language with which they talk to themselves.

I love when I see new students. Of course in NYC we have such a diverse group of culturally sophisticated women. Most new comers look at me with a sparkle in their eye, and you can tell they appreciate the road we are going down. Sometimes you will get two young girls coming together as friends, they will roll their eyes at each other, blush and giggle – I tend to think if they are a little surprised by the material and the approach, even if they laugh at it, maybe the penny will drop a little bit. Even if they think I am some old crazy lady at least they will have heard some of the things we have to say and maybe someday they will appreciate them.

But still, at the school bus stop I keep my double life pretty quiet. I mean, how does a mother of two explain that from time to time you might find her out in a club leading the secret life of a showgirl …. dancing burlesque. How would I even start to explain that?

For me – when I first started watching burlesque their were things I liked and things I didn’t. Same thing today. You can’t love everything. But I love that at burlesque shows the audience is often more women than men. I love that the women who dance are supremely confident and often very glamorous. They set their own standard for what is beautiful. There is an old style of glamour where the woman chooses to be her own creation. She defines her own standard of beauty. It is not about looking like some fake airbrushed thing from a magazine, it is about real womanly beauty.

Since we started the Pink Chardonnays it has been such a pleasure to introduce other regular women to the pleasure of dancing burlesque. To set the goal of dancing a simple strip tease, to see people consider obstacles in their mind, to briefly doubt them self, to go through with the dance, to have an exhilarating and life affirming experience of having people appreciate and like your performance. I love seeing the girls have this giddy high – and say,like a little kid at a merry go round – “can we do it again right now – it was to short.” I love that. You rarely hear grown women happy like kids. To me, I seek out those kind of experiences. And I love the closeness and friendship that grows in the groups, people are grateful to be surrounded by fun loving people with a similar positive outlook. A few days after the shows when everyone gets to share all their photos, another wave of healing sets in. the women see themselves, all glamorous and gorgeous – and they feel proud to be part of the picture.

And so – I don’t hide my double life through any shame. I am deeply proud of my work. But it is just a little hard to explain. People could see it another way.

At Burlesque Bikini Bootcamp we are launching “the Campaign for Womanly Beauty.” CFWB is about about endorsing many different standards of womanly beauty. You don’t have to write to your senator about it – but you do have to work on this campaign at a grass roots level. It can be as simple as giving heartfelt compliments to people who need it, or who inspire you. It could be taking five minutes to have a little intervention when you hear someone being self deprecating. Most importantly the campaign is deeply personal, it is about waking up every morning and choosing to approve of the girl in the mirror and to set your own standard of how you would like to carry yourself in the world, others be damned.

When Ghandi said ” Be the change you want to see in the world…..” I am not sure he envisioned the Pink Chardonnays prancing around in le0pard print bras with sparkly marraccas….. but I think it is worth it. Why should little girls think they have to look like something from a reality show or feeling like they have a limited expiration date. I ask you to get to work with the Campaign For Womanly Beauty. If any of you have companies whose thinking is in synch with this campaign, please reach out to me because we are looking for corporate sponsors for some upcoming events.

Memorial day is just around the corner. We are just about a month away from swimsuit season. Yikes…. The good news is that a little self tanner can really improve your appearance and self confidence. the trick is finding the right self tanner for you. I just took a trip to Miami – I was totally winter white. My favorite in salon product is the Express Tan. The Express tan is designed for you to just leave on your skin for a couple of hours. I leave it on overnight and I find it gives me a slightly darker color than the regular tan. Nothing crazy though. I also find this product fades really nicely.When I don’t have time to get to the salon, my favorite products for at home use are Brazil Bronze Glow Potion and Glow Stretcher. Both products smell great and give subtle results. They are easy to use without making a mistake which is very important to me. Also – when I was away this was my first time of fully using the Spray Tan Safe SPF 30 – it worked perfectly in the hot Miami sun, keeping my skin great – not the slightest burn, even though I was out and about and by the pool and in the water. I LOVE this product, it is so nice to use, very light on the skin, not greasy – very light pleasant fragrance.

So – there is about a month til Memorial day – I suggest finding an exercise that you LOVE and doing it often. For me I love to dance and I love to run outside. I do Burlesque Bikini Bootcamp twice a week, I run whenever I can, I get to Barry’s Bootcamp a couple of days a week and practice latin dancing as often as possible. I don’t think about working out as a chore – I think of it as a priveledge. I think of all the people with physical issues who will never feel the thrill of running, or the utter joy of dancing – as long as my legs will carry me I revel in the joy of movement. Try on a bunch of swimsuits and find something that suits you. Be kind to your self. Get your spray tan – and get out there and have a good time. Hey – and don’t forget to wear your sunscreen!